Automatic document layout generation based upon variable content is a critical step in highly customized Variable Data Printing (VDP) applications. VDP applications generally refer to print jobs where particular objects are substituted for generic objects in the un-customized layout. More particularly, for instance, in VDP applications, the document layouts are highly customized for the individual recipients of the documents.
The customizations of the document layouts typically require a substantial amount of effort to generally ensure that the new layouts have certain aesthetic levels. In many instances, naïve placements of the objects in the new document layouts often destroy the aesthetics of the document layouts. By way of example, the naïve placements of objects in customizing the document layouts may result in destruction of alignment relationships between various objects, overlap between various ones of the objects, or creation of large gaps between various objects in the document. An experienced operator is typically required to manually adjust the documents to correct these problems, which greatly increases the costs associated with producing the customized documents.
It would thus be desirable to have a relatively inexpensive and automated system for creating new document layouts while substantially maintaining relatively high aesthetic levels.